2. The goal of this literature review is to understand the past, present, and future of
Rwandan language policy and planning, especially in education, as well as one of its principal
concomitants, the language attitudes of the Rwandan people.
WHY STUDY RWANDAN LANGUAGE POLICY & LANGUAGE PLANNING?
Questions of language policy are important in former colonial African settings such as
Rwanda, in part because of increasing globalization pressures on their populations, who do not
by and large speak a language of international prestige (Baldauf & Kaplan, 2004). There are
exceptions in the African context, such as the cases of speakers of Hausa in and around Nigeria
and speakers of Kiswahili in East Africa (Adegbija, 1994), but status of these pan-African
regional languages is still often overshadowed by the hegemonic legacy of European colonial
languages, like French, English, and Portuguese.
In addition, many such colonial milieux are characterized by potentially explosive
ethnolinguistic tensions (Adegbija, 1994) that may be defused by the establishment of language
of wider communication (Breton, 2003). Language attitudes and language policy researchers
have thus concentrated primarily on intensely multilingual societies (Adegbija, 1994), such as
Nigeria (see, for example, Awonusi, 1985), South Africa (see, for example, Vorster & Proctor,
1975), and Tanzania (see, for example, Rubagumya, 1991).1
Given that Rwanda is an oligolingual society (Rosendal, 2006), it is true that very little
language attitudes and language policy research was done in Rwanda before 1994.2
Such
investigation has proliferated, however, since the 1994 genocide, which will be addressed in the
third section of this paper. Language attitudes and policy studies here are part of a more general
newfound academic and political focus on education in Rwanda that has come because many
Rwandan policymakers perceive educational failure as a factor in the genocide (Woodward,
2000). One high-ranking Rwandan education official remarked in Ball & Freedman (2004):
1
Language attitudes and policy research in Africa also focuses very disproportionately on the former British colonies. This may be
due to the primarily Anglophone genealogy of language policy studies.
2
For three examples, see Bangamwabo, 1989, Hoben, 1988, and Munyakazi, 1984.
2
2
3. “An education that leads to genocide is a terrible education as far as we’re
concerned...if someone who has a degree, the diploma, or the PhDs could go out
of their way and could either kill or allow others to kill or plan to kill, that gave
the feeling that that education was wrong...What kind of education have I got if I
have no feelings at all?” (p. 20).
Conversely, Rwandans believe that education, done well, could play an equally powerful role in
preventing future violence (Woodward, 2000). Such is the impetus behind a general
reconstruction of the Rwandan education system and curricula, with tolerance, solidarity, the
value of cultural diversity, and human rights as their moral touchstones. With the entire
education sector, including language in education, still evolving and growing—and with funding
tight—an informed perspective on language policy and planning is much needed.
More specifically sociolinguistically, studies in Rwandan language policy and planning
are important because Rwanda is governed by a linguistically divided elite. Most Rwandan
functionaries are Kinyarwanda-French bilinguals; a growing and powerful number of them,
however, are Kinyarwanda-English bilinguals. In addition, a very small percentage of them are
English-French bilinguals (Ball & Freedman, 2004; Munyankesha, 2004). This division, which
will be covered in more detail later, came about mostly because returnees from the Rwandan
diaspora, who now make up a sizable segment of Rwanda’s high officeholders, found harbor in
Anglophone countries during their exile. There seems to be some debate about the gravity and
scope of this division (Ball & Freedman, 2004; Munyankesha, 2004; Ruremesha, 2004).
Nonetheless, in the wake of the genocide, there is a strong desire among Rwandans to eliminate
any potential dividers (Ball & Freedman, 2004; “Interview,” 2000; Obura, 2003).
Finally, and simply, Rwandan language policy and planning is important because most
Rwandans, who are (in many cases illiterate or semi-literate) monolingual Kinyarwanda
speakers, want, at least in the abstract, to learn both French and English (Ball & Freedman,
2004; Munyankesha, 2004; Obura, 2003).
3
3
4. RWANDA’S LINGUISTIC GEOGRAPHY
Before proceeding, a sociolinguistic snapshot of Rwanda is in order: Rwanda is a rare
case in sub-Saharan Africa, for within its borders the majority of the population speak the same
language as mother tongue.3
That language is Kinyarwanda (or simply, Rwanda). A tonal,
Bantu language closely related to the Kirundi language spoken in neighboring Burundi
(Jouannet, 1983), Kinyarwanda is spoken as a first language by at least ninety percent of the
Rwandan population. Although the unitary language referred to as Kinyarwanda does comprise
several regional dialects, they are all intercomprehensible (Munyankesha, 2004).
Most Rwandans, including bilinguals and trilinguals,4
use Kinyarwanda for everyday
communication (Munyankesha, 2004). In addition, as the national language and one of three
official languages, Kinyarwanda is the language of primary education, court proceedings, public
meetings arranged by government authorities, and almost all religious gatherings. In policy, at
least, all government documents are available in Kinyarwanda. Moreover, Kinyarwanda is often
employed in radio and print media, parliamentary debates, local-level administration, and some
interior commerce.
Alongside Kinyarwanda, there exist in Rwanda three primary exoglossic languages.
French, introduced when the Belgians colonized Rwanda in 1919 (Ball & Freedman, 2004), is
Rwanda’s second official language, and first colonial one. For the greater part of the twentieth
century, it was the only language of national government and the academy. It is still dominant
there, at least numerically. Spoken by eight percent of the population (Ruremesha, 2004),
French is the prevailing language of secondary and tertiary education, national administration,
and a good bit of Rwanda’s international relations. Additionally, some local administration and
interior commerce takes place in French, as does some mass communication. Street names,
3
Compare this to Nigeria, where there are at least four hundred languages spoken, not one of them making up the majority language
(Adegbija, 1994). Other oligo- or monolingual countries like Rwanda include Burundi, Somalia, Lesotho, and Swaziland.
4
The percentage of the population who are bilinguals matches up almost exactly to the percentages given for English and French
speakers below. The percentage of trilinguals is well under one percent of the population, and in most cases, they are highly
imbalanced, either favoring French or English as their second language. In addition, there is some evidence that Rwandan
trilinguals tend to overstate their proficiency in their third language (Munyankesha, 2004).
4
4
5. currency, checks, and documents produced by the justice system all utilize French. National
identity cards are currently issued in French and Kinyarwanda.
As mentioned earlier, English has been making significant inroads in Rwandan society
since the return of refugees from Uganda and other English-speaking countries in 1994 (Ball &
Freedman, 2004). It is currently spoken by about three percent of the population (Ruremesha,
2004), with concentrations in and around Kigali, the national capital. Since 1996, English has
been Rwanda’s third official language. Although it is not employed exclusively in any domain, it
is increasingly used in national administration, international relations, secondary and tertiary
education, the press, and international commerce, the latter especially as Rwanda joined the
Common Market of Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) Free Trade Area 2004.
Finally, though Kiswahili is relatively absent from the public discourse on language, its
history in Rwanda checkered and its status undefined, East Africa’s endogenous lingua franca
nonetheless plays a notable role in Rwandan society. First introduced in Rwanda by German
colonial administration prior to World I, Kiswahili was later banned by Catholic missionaries
because of its associations with Rwanda’s small Muslim population (Munyankesha, 2004).
During the Rwandan diaspora in Swahili-speaking Uganda and Tanzania, however, it became
the language of the exilic Rwandan Patriotic Front, which is now Rwanda’s national army.
No survey gives any definite indication the percentage of Rwandans who speak Swahili,
but estimates put the figure between ten and twenty-five percent (Munyankesha, 2004). There
remains some prejudice against speakers of Kiswahili,5
and Rwanda’s language in education
policy has been criticized for neglecting the language (Ntakirutimana, 2001). Despite that, its
continued use in international commerce with the members of COMESA and in urban
commercial centers likely means that Swahili will survive as part of the Rwandan linguistic
landscape for at least the foreseeable future.
5
Many Swahilophones in Rwanda are not Rwandan in ethnicity. They include Turks, Arabs, and some south Asians. Prejudice
against them has made it into the lexicon of Kinyarwanda, where “umuswahili” denotes someone who is a liar and a thief and who
never keeps his word.
5
5
6. In summary, the vast majority of Rwandans speak Kinyarwanda, the national and first
official language of Rwanda. A much smaller portion of the population speaks one or both of the
other official languages, French and English, and chiefly only in official domains. A significant,
though indeterminate, number of Rwandans also speak Kiswahili, mostly in commercial
settings. In closing, it is worthwhile to mention that there are several other languages spoken by
small populations at the peripheries of Rwandan territory, such as Luganda (near the border
with Uganda), Kirundi (near the border with Burundi), and Lingala (near the border with
Congo).
A SOCIOHISTORICAL, LINGUISTIC, AND EDUCATIONAL HISTORY OF RWANDA
Adegbija (1994) argues rightly that an understanding of the sociohistorical roots of
language attitudes is crucial to productive language policy and planning in any context (see also
St. Clair, 1982). With an eye toward language and education, then, let us proceed through a
highly synoptic course in Rwandan history:
Before the arrival of German colonial administration around the turn of the twentieth
century, a cattle-herding Tutsi royal family controlled Rwanda, a fertile, hilly kingdom
peacefully co-inhabited by a majority population of agrarian Hutu and a smaller minority of Twa
people. The Tutsi-Hutu distinction did not exist as it would come to in the twentieth century;
considerable intermarriage during this period demonstrates that it was most likely but a fluid,
vocational difference, not an immutably ethnic one. Virtually all Rwandans shared the same
language, Kinyarwanda.
During the colonial German period (1900-1917), the Germans did not directly administer
the territory. For the most part, they left governance to the monarchy already in place, who in
turn allowed European missionaries to establish programs in religious, literacy, and trade
education. For all the good these missionary groups did, however, the most prominent of them,
an order of French Catholics called the White Fathers (les Pères Blancs), would later be
implicated in the inception of the ethnic divide that would rive the country, founded on a
6
6
7. eugenic myth that Tutsi were of more “Hamitic” (and therefore whiter) origin than Hutu
(Jamoulle, 1927; Classe, 1930, Newbury, 1988; Funga-Ntagaramba, 2003; Redekop & Gasana,
2007).
After World War I, the League of Nations mandated control of Rwanda to the Belgians,
who subsidized religious education, granting even more didactic power to the French-speaking
Pères Blancs. It was during this period that French became the language of higher education
and of government (Ball & Freedman, 2004)—and that the hitherto soft distinction between
“Hutu” and “Tutsi” fossilized.
Now, it was by no means merely religious educators who drew this specious dividing
line. Indeed, it was the Belgian administration itself that established absurd, biometric criteria
to classify Rwandans, actually measuring their height and nose width to categorize them as
belonging to one of the two “ethnicities.” They put this “information” on national identity cards
and use it to systematically shut the darker, inferior Hutu out of education and positions of
power, while granting considerable authority to the Tutsi.
Violent political changes in the late 50s and early 60s left between 20,000 and 100,000
Tutsi (including a king) dead, Rwanda an independent republic, and the Hutu in control. Many
Tutsi fled to neighboring countries, where they organized and began mounting a series of
attacks to regain political power. During these years, under the pretext that local Tutsi were
aiding these Tutsi border fighters, the Hutu régime systematically denied educational
opportunities to the Tutsi, just as the Tutsi had done to them under Belgian administration (Ball
& Freedman, 2004). Moreover, the Hutu government carried out a series of massacres of local
Tutsi to halt their supposed support of the invading Tutsi.
Meanwhile, the Hutu government (with considerable financial and planning aid from
Belgium) established universal, free, obligatory primary education for children ages 7-12, in the
French language, to be accomplished primarily through subsidized private schools (Funga-
Ntagaramba, 2003). In addition, they set forth an official pattern for secondary education,
7
7
8. consisting of a cycle of three years of general education, followed by a three-year cycle of
specialized education focusing on either agriculture, medicine, administration, commerce, or
technical skills. Higher education in Rwanda arrived in 1963 with the creation of the National
University of Rwanda in Butare. Most Tutsi children were not permitted past the primary level.
A 1973 coup d’état did not substantially change the educational system, but did send
more Tutsi into exile (Ball & Freedman, 2004; Funga-Ntagaramba, 2003). French continued to
strengthen and expand as the language of the Rwandan elite. Meanwhile, a generation of
Rwandan expatriates grew up learning English, and consolidated as a cross-border resistance
army, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF).
Civil war in the early 1990s, sparked by an RPF invasion and fanned by government-
sponsored pogroms of Tutsi, set the stage for the genocide of 1994. On April 6, 1994, unknown
aggressors shot down a French Mystère-Falcon jet carrying Juvénal Habyarimana, the Hutu
president of Rwanda, who was returning from power-sharing talks with the RPF in Uganda. No
one knows for sure who fired the fateful missiles that downed the plane. It may have been
members of the RPF, out of frustration with the slow-moving pace of talks with Habyarimana.
It may have been Hutu extremists from Habyarimana’s own family, upset over the possibility of
him agreeing to share too much power with rival Tutsis.
Regardless, a hundred days of genocide immediately followed, having been primed
ideologically by hate radio and prepared strategically by government planning. Armed with
grenades, assault rifles, and machetes, the Interahamwe and the Impuzamugambi, two radical
Hutu militias backed by the Rwandan government, swarmed from house to house, killing Tutsis
and moderate Hutus in a campaign of well organized, premeditated extermination. Despite
ample press coverage and repeated urging from the leader of the tiny, hamstrung UN
peacekeeping contingent in Rwanda (which was not even authorized by the UN to fire its guns),
no nation or international body came to Tutsi aid.6
By July, Hutus had slaughtered between
6
Some French might object to this assertion in light of Opération Turquoise, a French military operation in June of 1994 whose
official aim was to create a “secure zone” in southern Rwanda to help stop the genocide. Its actual aims are under considerable
8
8
9. 500,000 and a million of their fellow Rwandans. The carnage came to an end only as the RPF,
led by now-President Paul Kagame, overran Kigali and overthrew the Hutu government.
Part of the manifold restorative work ahead of the newly formed coalition government
was to rebuild the education system in Rwanda (Obura, 2003). The Ministry of Education
(MOE) was charged with writing human rights, tolerance, and national unity into the
curriculum. Furthermore, the government added English to the constitution as Rwanda’s third
official language in 1996,7
and in response the MOE made “the classical four language skills, in
three languages” a system-wide goal for every child (MOE, 1996). According to policy
documents, the socio-political context of post-genocide 1994 demanded that all three languages
be taught so as to “harmonize” Rwanda’s Francophones and newly arrived Anglophones
population (Obura, 2003). Munyankesha (2004) argues that the policy was also driven by a
desire to open up the Rwandan economy to its eastern and southern African neighbors. Explicit
statements on the part of the president and the Ministry of Education certainly indicate as such
(“Interview,” 2000; MOESTR, 2003a; MOESTR, 2003b)
The new, national French language curriculum was developed with help from France,
and is, according to one researcher (Obura, 2003), a “sound programme which has consistently
produced syllabuses and learning activities that are well in tune with the participatory learning
techniques promoted by contemporary education theory” (p. 91). Development of the English
language curriculum was initiated right away, but Obura (2003) argues it made no headway
until Oxford University Press donated their Oxford Primary English series, designed specifically
for the region. Unfortunately, according to Obura (2003), neither language program featured
the theme of national reconciliation across the curriculum; explicit focus on reconciliation
appears to be limited to the history and civics programs. Given that language can act as a
vehicle of ideology (Fairclough, 1989; Gee, 1999), Obura regards this as a significant oversight.
dispute, however, as more than a few observers have accused the French government of trying to aid the Hutu rump government
and establish French authority in the part of Rwanda still controlled by them. For more on Opération Turquoise, see Bistline
(2004).
7
Memos and policy documents indicate that members of the new government were thinking about English’s future in Rwanda from
as early as November of 1994 (Obura, 2003).
9
9
10. Her estimation, while perhaps too swiftly brushing aside the fact that the donated L2 textbooks,
upon which much of the curriculum was built, pay no attention to the subject of reconciliation,
is both singular and forward-thinking.
Obura also notes that the educational focus on trilingualism actually ended up de-
emphasizing mathematics & science in the overall curriculum, a consequence that has since
been addressed (MOESTR, 2003a, 2003b).
RWANDA’S CURRENT LANGUAGE POLICY
Outside of education as within, Rwanda’s trilingual policy is being implemented slowly,
mostly due to limitations in human and financial resources. Officially, all money, identity cards,
passports, visas, driver’s licenses, and government documents are to be in all three languages
(Munyankesha, 2004). Presently, they are not. All cabinet members and senior civil servants
are required to speak all three languages—except, curiously, President Paul Kagame, who, when
asked in an interview with Jeune Afrique magazine in 2000 if he was learning French, replied, “I
am trying. But I do not have enough time. If I did have the time, I am sure it would not be
terribly difficult. I already understand quite a number of things. I am not a good speaker. I
cannot speak French, but if I listen carefully, I pick a lot of things” (“Interview,” 2000). A
Christian Science Monitor article from the same year confirms that Kagame “doesn’t speak a
word of French” (Santoro, 2000). He may have started to learn recently, however, as a later
newspaper article asserts (Ruremesha, 2004).
The current education system calls for nine years of free education,8
the first six of which
are obligatory. Officially, at the primary level there are four hours a week devoted to learning
French and English as second languages during the first two years (as compared to seven
learning Kinyarwanda) and five hours a week each during the third year (six for Kinyarwanda),
with Kinyarwanda as the general language of instruction (Munyankesha, 2004; Riekes, 2005).
The government openly acknowledges that education in students’ first language is essential to
8
This is apparently a recent decision, and Rwanda’s financial backers like the International Monetary Fund (2004) expressed some
concern over the fact that it was introduced without having been costed.
10
10
11. basic literacy and numeracy skills (MOESTR, 2003b, in agreement with Hamers & Blanc, 1983,
Bouton, 1970, and others). In the fourth year of primary education, however, French or English
displaces Kinyarwanda as the language of instruction. Only three hours a week are devoted to
the study of Kinyarwanda, and five devoted to each of the European languages (Ball &
Freedman, 2004; Munyankesha, 2004; Riekes, 2005). In ninety-five percent of schools, French
becomes the language of instruction, and English remains a foreign language. The other five
percent of schools, where English become the language of instruction, are concentrated in
Kigali. A good portion of them are private schools. In some schools, there is both a French
“stream” and an English “stream” housed in the same building, resulting in some linguistic
segregation (Ball & Freedman, 2004).
In the first three years of secondary education (called the “tronc commun”), which are
free and focused on general education, the language of instruction remains whatever it was at
the upper primary level, but Kinyarwanda is only taught two hours a week, and French and
English six hours each. At the end of the tronc commun, students who plan to continue to upper
secondary (who have the money to do so) choose to focus their final three years in either Letters,
Social Sciences & Pedagogy, or Math-Physics & Biochemistry. If they choose Letters, they study
Kinyarwanda and Kiswahili for four hours a week each, and French and English for seven hours
a week each. In contrast, if they choose Social Sciences & Pedagogy, they study Kinyarwanda for
two hours a week, and French and English for three hours a week. Finally, if they choose Math-
Physics & Biochemistry, they follow the same breakdown as those in Social Sciences &
Pedagogy, except that during their last year in school, they do not study Kinyarwanda at all
(Munyankesha, 2004; Riekes, 2005).
Higher education, which takes place at the National University of Rwanda or one of
twelve other institutions, demands a preliminary year devoted entirely to the mastery of French
and English (Munyankesha, 2004; Obura, 2003), because university students are expected to
know both (Kanyarukiga, van der Meer, Paalman, Poate, & Schrader, 2006). Professors lecture
11
11
12. in French or English, whichever they prefer, just as students take exams in whichever they
prefer.
LANGUAGE ATTITUDES IN RWANDA: FRANCOPHONIE VS. ANGLOPHONIE?
One of the reasons consistently offered by the government as well as the people of
Rwanda for the implementation of this trilingual policy is a supposed lurking antipathy between
those Rwandans who speak French and those Rwandans who speak English. This is the account
offered by one education official interviewed by Ball & Freedman (2004):
“Today some wounds are still in effect. But twenty years, ten years down the
road, we think that that generation will be much better at forgiving [pause] That
explains [why] we also have bilingualism as a national policy because we want to
use communication, you know, English, French, you know, as part of the
[reconciliation] courses. Because Rwandan society, among other things, has been
divided along Anglophone-Francophone lines. And what we are saying is that,
how does it help you if you consider yourself Anglophone or Francophone, as a
Rwandese? (p. 23)
This official’s remarks are an example of a line of commentary that is common among
some Rwandans. Munyankesha’s (2004) survey revealed highly mixed results in answer to the
question, “Do you think that relations between different linguistic groups in Rwanda are good?”
Many respondents in his survey as well as in Ball & Freedman’s (2004) interviews adduce this
split as good rationale for having both French and English as official languages.
It is true that former President Habyarimana did rail against English as the language of
“Tutsi cockroaches” when the RPF started making border raids in 1990 (Obura, 2003). Further,
some Francophones under the new regime accuse the Anglophones in President Kagame’s circle
of political domination and a tendency to impose English on the population (Ruremesha, 2004;
Santoro, 2000).
In addition, the current presidential administration is marked by a certain francophobia.
12
12
13. Kagame, a Rwandophone and an Anglophone who, as mentioned above, may or may not speak
French, has repeatedly and publicly chastised the French government, accusing them of more
than just complicity in the 1994 genocide, even forming a special commission in 2004 to look
into France’s role in aiding the murderous Hutu régime (Ruremesha, 2004).9
However, Kagame’s attack is leveled specifically at the French government, not at the
French language. Here is Kagame, responding in Jeune Afrique to the question, “Is there a
conflict between French-speaking and English-speaking Rwandans?”:
“If there is a conflict we should be able to manage it. There is a bigger conflict
when you have people who speak neither language. They are just ignorant, and
they cannot communicate with foreigners. So potentially there is a bigger conflict
area there. But for those who speak French and English, if there is a conflict, it
would be a very easy problem to manage. If we found them quarreling, we would
stop them and teach them how it is advantageous to speak both languages.
Anyway, we have a common ground because we all speak Kinyarwanda. It is very
interesting. In our Cabinet meetings, there are those who speak French and
those who speak English. We don’t need interpreters. In the end we understand
each other and pass resolutions. Kinyarwanda unifies us, if anyone needs to
elaborate on something they use Kinyarwanda. If there are any problems, it is
with people who are unreasonable. (“Interview,” 2000).
Citing the presence of Kinyarwanda as a unifier (a common conception in Rwanda), Kagame
dismisses Rwandans with linguistic enmity as marginal, ignorant, and “unreasonable.”
Munyankesha (2004) echoes this sentiment, asserting that language-related friction is only
present amongst a few elite: “Cette rivalité, qui d’ailleurs reste à relativiser, n’est qu’une affaire
de quelques intellectuels” (p. 161). The fact that Kagame and Munyankesha had to make these
comments, however, indicate that a specter of linguistic animus remains, and though it is
9
Assassinated former President Habyrimana was always a faithful supporter of Paris, and French arms sales may have supplied the
Interahamwe with their murder weapons. In addition, see footnote 6 above about Opération Turquoise.
13
13
14. primarily but a specter, avoiding it is nevertheless one of the primary motivations for Rwanda’s
language policy.
LANGUAGE ATTITUDES IN RWANDA
In the abstract, Rwandans are enthusiastic about their nation’s current trilingual policy.
Language attitudes research in both urban (Ball & Freedman, 2004; Munyankesha, 2004) and
rural (Munyankesha, 2004; Obura, 2003) contexts consistently affirm that Rwandans of all ages
and vocations favor the official status quo. To almost every respondent in Obura’s (2003)
interviews with eighteen rural sixth- to twelfth-graders, Ball & Freedman’s (2004) interviews of
twenty-two educational leaders and eighty-four students, parents, and teachers in Kigali and
Butare, and Munyankesha’s (2004) survey and interviews of 205 Rwandans from all over the
country, French and English are very important. While Kinyarwanda is a prized symbol of
national unity and identity to them and crucial for all aspects of daily life, most Rwandans
believe that Kinyarwanda does not suffice to assure their living. In fact, according to
Munyankesha’s survey, virtually no Rwandan likes the idea of Kinyarwanda remaining the only
national language, or of Kinyarwanda becoming the language of instruction at secondary or
tertiary levels of education.10
Part of the reason for the latter may be that they judge
Kinyarwanda incapable of being used in modern science (Munyankesha, 2004).
In all three of the above studies, Rwandans extolled French and English as useful for
travel abroad, essential to competitiveness on both the Rwandan and the international job
markets, and important for contact with the outside world.11
Bilinguals and trilinguals are proud
of their mastery of these languages because of they feel it makes them more hirable and earns
them more social respect (Ball & Freedman, 2004).12
Many participants in the studies viewed
the two languages as a means to access to a wider range of books than is available in
10
According to the survey, Rwandans fully support Kinyarwanda as the language of instruction in primary school.
11
Interestingly, parts of the outside world seem just as interested in contact with Rwanda. The Department for International
Develop, a UK government department responsible for promoting development and reducing poverty, cited its own English
monolingualism as a hindrance to humanitarian contacts in Rwanda at least a dozen times in their most recent self-evaluation
report (Kanyarukiga, van der Meer, Paalman, Poate, & Schrader, 2006).
12
There is some evidence that Rwandan trilinguals tend to overstate their proficiency in their third language (Munyankesha, 2004).
14
14
15. Kinyarwanda and as a way to open their minds to other cultures (Ball & Freedman, 2004;
Munyankesha, 2004). To the large majority of those surveyed or interviewed, the use of a
foreign language in government administration does not constitute a threat to Rwandan
national identity (Munyankesha, 2004). Virtually all Rwandans want to learn at least one of the
other official languages, and regard it desirable that all Rwandans be trilingual.13
Ball & Freedman’s (2004) interviewees were particularly in favor of the introduction of
English because of its status as a global language. According to Ball & Freedman, given the
current administration, Rwandans also understand English as necessary to “stimulate better
and wider communication in the country, promote national unity, and to further future national
development” (pp 22-23). Corroboratingly, although respondents to Munyankesha’s (2004)
survey almost unanimously put Kinyarwanda, then French, then English as the order of the
language importance in Rwanda, many of them were quick to note that they rank French higher
than English simply because more people speak it.
As a final note, most respondents to Munyankesha’s survey saw government intervention
on matters of language as good. So, in sum, the language attitudes of the Rwandan people and
those represented in official Rwandan language policy match very well, and the situation
reminiscent of Adegbija’s (1994) assertion that “the attitudes of policy planners from
above...have a remarkable impact on the formation of attitudes from below” (p. 113).14
IMPLEMENTATION OF RWANDA’S CURRENT LANGUAGE POLICY
Not only are Rwandans’ language attitudes seemingly shaped by government discourse
on the matter, but according to Ball & Freedman (2004), their enthusiasm is representative of
what is “internally persuasive...[only] in the ideal and abstract,” not, as we will see, in practice
(p. 23).
There is a considerable divide between Rwandan language policy and its implementation
13
As does the president: When asked, “Do you think English and French can co-exist in Rwanda today?”, Kagame replied, “I think
so. And it could be a great advantage to our country. Both languages are assets to our country. If you ask my personal view, I would
encourage all Rwandese to be able to speak both languages. That is my personal view” (“Interview, 2000”).
14
Interestingly, Munyankesha (2004) writes that most Rwandans had little interest in learning foreign languages before the
genocide and the installation of the new regime.
15
15
16. (Munyankesha, 2004; Ball & Freedman, 2004). The Rwandan Ministry of Education (2003b)
consistently cites “non-respect of official directives in the matter of language teaching” as a
“constraint as to improvement of quality education” (p. 60). In agreement with this declaration,
Ball & Freedman (2004) note that “language practices in the schools seem slow to change” (p.
23). For example, although officially, as explained above, primary schools switch to a European
language as the vehicle of instruction in the fourth year, Munyankesha (2004) found in one
Kigali school that they did not switch until the fifth year, and that they spend more hours a week
on Kinyarwanda than are officially allotted.15
Even less compliant with policy, Ball & Freedman
(2004) report that many elementary schools teach only in Kinyarwanda.
What official reports neglect to mention are the important and numerous reasons for the
disconnect between p0licy and practice. Lack of resources is chief among them, despite the fact
that spending on education accounts for 25% of government non-interest recurrent
expenditures (International Monetary Fund [IMF], 2004). The schools often do not have staff
proficient enough in either French or English to teach in those languages (Aglo & Lethoko,
2003; Ball & Freedman, 2004; Kanyarukiga, van der Meer, Paalman, Poate, & Schrader, 2006;
Munyankesha, 2004; Obura, 2003). Moreover, schools simply do not have enough teachers, let
alone proficient ones (Ball & Freedman, 2004; Funga-Ntagaramba, 2003). The teachers schools
do employ are not paid well (Aglo & Lethoko, 2003).
Neither do the schools have sufficient material resources (Ball & Freedman, 2004; IMF,
2004). Obura (2003) reports that the ratio of English textbooks to students in primary schools
in somewhere between 1:13 to 1:22. (Even mother-tongue language and math textbooks are
available only at ratios between 1:2 to 1:4.) There are also complaints about insufficient facilities
(Funga-Ntagaramba, 2003). The fact is, education money is being spent in a myriad of ways,
including subsidizing private schooling for girls and rendering the first nine years of public
15
In one Kigali private school Munyankesha worked with, he found the division of time to be even more deviant from official policy.
Depending on which stream students were in, through the third year they studied Kinyarwanda for three hours a week, one of the
European languages for ten hours a week, and the other for five hours a week. In the fourth through sixth years of school, they
studies Kinyarwanda for three hours a week, their primary European language for twelve hours a week, and their secondary
European language for six hours a week.
16
16
17. schooling free (expenditures that have not yet been costed, a fact that has apparently given the
International Monetary Fund reason for slight alarm [2004]). Simply put, there is not enough
capital to go around. Some Rwandan educators recognize as much and conclude that
introducing a new language of instruction is financially impractical. Said one administrator, “If
students are to learn in both languages, first of all, teachers must master those languages. I am
silent about the lack of textbooks of both languages. So, I think using both languages now
doubles the problems” (Ball & Freedman, 2004, p. 24). Concludes another, “In my opinion, this
is too ambitious of an objective” (p. 24).
Even if Rwanda were able to overcome its resource limitations, policy makers seem to
ignore that learning three languages in a society where at least ninety percent of the population
speaks one of them as an L1 is psychologically difficult. While officeholders and administrators
are pleased at climbing primary enrollment rates (from 75% in 2001 up to 82% in 2002 [IMF,
2004]), and literacy rates (from 52% in 1998 up to 70% in 2004), the school system is plagued
by a tremendous dropout rate (~30-40%), the bulk of which happens in the fourth year, when
the language of instruction switches from Kinyarwanda to French or English. It is reasonable to
assume that many of these students leave school because of the language change. Ball &
Freedman (2004) report that when students stay in school and have difficulty understanding the
vehicular French, teachers often resort to Kinyarwanda in order to communicate. Such
communicative reversion occurs even in some secondary schools (Ball & Freedman, 2004).
As a further example of the mental strain caused by Rwanda’s trilingual policy, hundreds
of Anglophone university students clashed with police in 1999 over being taught classes in
French (“Anglophone,” 1999). The Agence France Presse quoted one of the students as saying,
“We have had enough of working in French because this language is difficult for us and we have
not had enough time to learn it.” After being rebuffed by the prime minister, some of them
actually ran across the Ugandan border and claimed refugee status on the basis of political
discrimination (Santoro, 2000).
17
17
18. Compare the actions of those students to this sunny quotation from a government
official interviewed by Ball & Freedman (2004) about the benefits of Rwanda’s language policy:
Owing to the shortage of manpower, womanpower in our schools, if I move into a
classroom, and I speak English, which is what I do, those who speak French will
follow my lesson. Someone is doing, who speaks French only, will march into the
classroom and kids who come from so-called Anglophone background could
follow the lesson. It is happening, yeah” (p. 24).
Contrary to the above evidence, this official seems to think that Rwanda’s trilingual
policy has already “worked.” Unfortunately, it is not nearly that simple. It is demanding to
learn a language, especially when one’s neighbors do not speak it. Rwandans have little chance
to practice target European languages in everyday settings, especially in rural areas, where as of
1996 monolingual Rwandophones made up over ninety percent of the population (as opposed to
fifty-six percent in Kigali) (Munyankesha, 2004).
Even when students are surrounded by people who speak or are learning to speak
English or French, the knowledge that virtually everyone speaks Kinyarwanda as their first
language can render situationally senseless a more taxing attempt at communication in one of
the European languages. Having observed this, Munyankesha finds his initial hypothesis—“que,
dans une population monolingue, les langues étrangères ont de la peine à s’épanouir, peu
importe leur statut, et que, par contre, leur promotion dépend énormément des attitudes
linguistiques que manifeste cette population à leur égard” (p. 4)—to be true, and that the slow
pace of the advance of Rwanda’s trilingual policy despite Rwandans’ enthusiasm about English
and French is occurring primarily because of “linguistic comfort.” “En effet, le fait de pouvoir
aisément communiquer avec tous ses concitoyens par le biais de sa langue maternelle exclut
d’emblée la nécessité d’apprendre les langues étrangères, quelle que soit leur envergure sur le
plan international” (p. 250). Admitting additionally the resource limitations explored above, I
agree with him.
18
18
19. IMPLEMENTATION SOLUTIONS FOR RWANDA’S LANGUAGE POLICY
Regrettably, researchers and policymakers in the Rwandan context have very little to say
about linguistic comfort. Most solutions to the gap between policy and practice proposed are
concerned with bolstering the apparatuses of education. These proposal are not without merit,
given the eviden resource problems discussed above. Funga-Ntagaramba (2003), the head of
the secondary education division of Rwanda’s National Center for Program Development, points
to the establishment of the Kigali Institute of Education (KIE) as well as local teacher training
centers (TTCs) as ways to a sufficient number of adequately trained teachers. He also mentions
somewhat ambiguous measures that have been taken to assure the support and continued
professional development of current teachers, as well as efforts to create positive, healthy
working environments for them. Regarding the curriculum, Funga-Ntagaramba alludes to a
system-wide survey of all teachers, students, school directors, and school inspectors to identify
problems with it. More generally, policy documents indicate that the Ministry of Education will
be conducting research “to inform decision-makers as to teacher and student language
competency, instructional hours required, regional differences, [and the] availability and
suitability of materials” (MOESTSR, 2003a, p. 49).
While all of the above actions are good, they give the impression of being far too vague.
Perhaps this lack of specificity is simply due to the nature of the policy documents I found, but
Munyankesha (2004) nonetheless repeatedly faults the Rwandan government for not being
explicit enough in setting forth their objectives. Accordingly, one of his main proposals is simply
that the administration outline their goals, objectives, and means in more depth.
In addition, Munyankesha (2004) supports the establishment of adult literacy centers
and the subsidizing of informal language classes, performances, elocution contests, and reading
clubs at places like the Franco-Rwandan Cultural Center and the American Cultural Center.
Furthermore, he recommends a budget hike for the applied linguists in the National University
of Rwanda’s Department of Education and stricter enforcement of the language in education
19
19
20. policy, especially on number of hours spent in each language.
Importantly, Munyankesha also argues for the promotion of both the status and corpus
of Kinyarwanda. Although this idea does not directly address the discrepancy between
Rwandan language policy and practice, linguists have noted that that no African country has
emerged on the global market without nurturing their indigenous languages (Mazrui, 1999).
Now, according to Munyankesha (2004), Kinyarwanda was graphicised under Belgian colonial
administration, and its orthography re-standardized in 1978 and 1983. Where Kinyarwanda
most needs attention, then, is in its lexicon. There have not been any rounds of official
neologism since a temporary Commission Nationale du Lexique attempted to modernize
Kinyarwanda in 1979. Since then, a grammar, a dictionary, and an etymological dictionary in
Kinyarwanda have all been created, but none of them published. Munyankesha advocates their
public issue, as well as work on bilingual French-Kinyarwanda and English-Kinyarwanda
dictionaries. He is the only researcher I have encountered to suggest such linguistic bridge-
building work, and I applaud him for doing so. Finally, he puts forward the idea of an Académie
linguistique du Rwanda to oversee all these projects.
Still, as insightful and/or needed as some of the above solutions are, only the
establishment of community milieux like the cultural clubs which Muynankesha suggests
addresses the issue of inducing an essentially monolingual population to rise above their
communicative comfort to master a second tongue (let alone a third one) by practicing it.
Certainly, recent liberalization and internationalization of the Rwandan economy, typified by
Rwanda’s joining of the COMESA Free Trade Area in 2004, will likely lead to an increase in
Rwandan interaction with non-Kinyarwanda speakers, and thereby an increase in the situational
exigence of learning English and French. But Rwandan policymakers seem to hold a desire to
help citizens prepare for this domestic spread of international capitalism ahead of time; they
would rather not leave to chance who is linguistically equipped for globalization and who is not
(MOESTSR, 2003b). Thus, the administration must find ways to help Rwandans move from
20
20
21. merely expressing desires to learn English and French to actually following through on them.
Otherwise, it is possible that the current strong approval the trilingual policy enjoys among even
monolinguals deteriorate into feelings of resentment or linguistic inferiority.
Hence, Rwandan policymakers and educationists must attempt to foster communicative
opportunities, such as the reading clubs Munyankesha puts forward. I would go a step further
and suggest that the administration establish and promote immersion contexts, such as vacation
language immersion camps and immersion schools. For such enterprising efforts, of course,
Rwanda would need to find a bevy of expert language informants. Additionally, the programs
would have to be inexpensive; otherwise, they would exclude most of the population. A
solution? Call on humanitarian-minded volunteers (preferably some with teaching or language
study background) to come to Rwanda to act as linguistic resources and, if they are qualified, as
teachers.16
FUTURE RESEARCH DIRECTIONS
With such an ambitious language policy being pursued in Rwanda, the Land of a
Thousand Hills has become a goldmine for potential research endeavors in applied linguistics.
Moreover, as long as the somewhat authoritarian Kagame regime (U.S. Dept. of State, 2006)
remains in power, I would argue that any changes to the language policy or experimental
strategies in its implementation will have to be backed up by research. It is perhaps in some
ways surprising, then, that very little such research has been done.17
Certainly, there is a need for informative research aimed at improving language
planning. Feasibility studies must be performed for experimental efforts like immersion camps.
Also, with an eye toward proper materials acquisitions for Rwandan schools, Obura (2003)
suggests that the administration conduct demographic studies of the number of schoolchildren
16
I am reflexively leery of further entrenching the “commonsense” assumption that the teaching of English is an intrinsically
humanitarian act. English is increasingly the language of global capitalism, however, and given the seemingly juggernaut advance of
that system, it does seem that teaching English will give Rwandans a leg up. Plus, unlike in some contexts where English is taught,
the people of Rwanda have expressed that they want to learn English.
17
Thankfully, Baldauf (2006) is planning an issue of Current Issues in Language Planning specifically geared toward Rwanda.
21
21
22. in the French and English streams. (No one actually knows how many students are in each.)
She also urges studies measuring the language proficiencies and language preferences of
teachers so as to more accurately gauge human resource needs. According to official
documents, the Ministry of Education has at least proposed such research (MOESTSR, 2003a).
Curiously, there is a dearth of comparative language planning studies involving Rwanda.
The only such study I know of is a dissertation project under way at Gothenberg University in
Sweden, which compares the status-corpus relationship of African languages in institutional
contexts in Rwanda and its multilingual northeastern neighbor, Uganda (Rosendal, 2006). As
this project remains unpublished, it is unclear what Rosendal has found.
Without doubt, language policy and planning comparisons would be fruitful, especially
between Rwanda and other African countries with similar linguistic and language policy
situations, such as the archipelago nation Seychelles, where students are taught in the three
official languages (French, English, and Seychellois Creole), and the relatively prosperous
Mauritius, where students are taught in official French and English but speak a third, unofficial
French creole (Aglo & Lethoko, 2003). Researchers may also find useful insight in juxtaposing
Rwanda’s language policy and planning with that of Cameroon, Somalia, Botswana, Burundi,
Lesotho, Swaziland, and Madagascar, all countries that share some elements with their
linguistic geography or language policy with Rwanda.
Comparative studies of Rwandan schools would also produce useful insight, especially
with schools where the year of transition to a European language as the language of instruction
and the number of hours spent on each language differs. The Rwandan Ministry of Education
seems to have decided on the ratio of hours spent on each language, as well as the transition
year, without any empirical evidence showing that the status quo is the most advantageous
possibility from a cognitive, affective, or second language acquisition standpoint. There is,
according to Munyankesha (2004), no SLA literature coming from a Rwandan context.
Finally, critical research in the Rwandan language context is a must. Critical social
22
22
23. analysts must attempt to ensure equity between schools in Kigali and Butare and those in the
rest of the country. And critical economists must attempt to secure the benefits of a language
industry (primarily publishing) for the people of Rwanda, as opposed to employment and profits
all going to overseas publishers.
Will Rwanda succeed in its ambitious goal of becoming a universally trilingual nation? If
the government procures the funds to fully establish the educational infrastructure their policy
necessitates, creates opportunities for Rwandans to overcome the linguistic comfort of being
widely monolingual, and fosters continued applied research and development in language and
implementation, then yes. •
23
23
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